Joint Task Force #1: Liberia Read Free

those men to hear you?”
    “What about the snakes?”
    “Ain’t no snakes. I was just kidding yesterday.”
    She kicked back, her white sneaker catching him on the shoulder.
    “Selma!”
    “That’s for scaring me.”
    The noise of the explosion reached them a second before the concussion blasted the two out of the shaft, sending them rolling into the bushes beneath the trees. Jamal tumbled over Selma, who started screaming. His left shoe hit her on the chin bringing the screaming to an abrupt halt. The left side of his face slammed into the dirt, causing his legs to catapult over his head, carrying his body into the thick bushes beneath the copse of trees.
    He lay there a few seconds, blinking. He touched his chest, straining to take a full breath. After several tries, the effects of the concussion wore off, normal breathing resumed, and Jamal sat up. He rubbed his eyes, blinked rapidly to clear them. Squinting, he put both hands on the ground and pushed himself up, using a nearby tree to steady his shaking legs.
    Faint starlight filtered through the leaves of the trees reflecting off the green-patterned dress that Selma was wearing. He stumbled toward the crumpled heap that was his sister, and breathed a sigh of relief when he heard whimpering.
    He squatted and shook her gently. “Are you all right?”
    She moaned. “I told you not to push me,” she whined through tears. “I’m going to tell Momma.”
    “I didn’t push you.”
    “Uh-uh, and you hurt me.”
    “Can you stand, Selma?” he asked, taking her by the arm and pulling her up carefully. He rose to one knee.
    She jerked away. “I can get up on my own.”
    “Keep your voice down, Selma. I didn’t push you. Something blew us out of the shaft.”
    His sister rolled over and moaned. “That hurt,” she said, sitting up. An orange glow flickered across her face.
    Jamal scrambled to the edge of the ditch and looked toward the house. Flames leaped from the wooden frame, licking through the roof and through a large hole from where the back of the house had been. Looking right and left, Jamal saw the houses along the row with his burning. Another explosion, this one a few blocks away, caught his attention. He watched as flames and debris shot into the air.
    “Look at the house,” Selma complained. “I want Momma and Daddy.”
    “Come on, Selma. We’ve got to get to Uncle Nathan’s and tell him.”
    Jamal, holding Selma’s hand, led the way as they leapfrogged over jungle debris, keeping to the edge of the American expatriate suburb of New Carrollton. The two stumbled along the jungle curtain that abruptly separated the dwindling jungle on the outskirts of Monrovia from the growing presence of Americans. His eyes roved back and forth. He was expecting at any moment for someone to jump out and grab them.They sneaked along the back of the houses, all of them in flames. He saw the home of his friend Sam as he and Selma hurried by it. He pulled her down abruptly as a group of shouting men ran around the side of Sam’s house. One of them was laughing and waving something that looked like a head.
    Jamal pulled Selma farther into the jungle, crouching there until the men disappeared toward the front.
    Satisfied they were gone, Jamal tugged her up and they continued toward Uncle Nathan’s house. He glanced back and saw a group of men standing in a circle kicking at something on the ground.
    The two siblings moved through the jungle, sometimes hiding as Africans appeared on their right. Groups of men running from the front of one house to another, silhouettes breaking the shadows for a moment before they disappeared, blocked by the next house. Periodically, bursts of gunfire broke the jungle quiet from the nearby housing complex. Each time, Jamal increased their speed, wanting to put distance between them and the fighting.
    Selma’s patterned dress and Jamal’s blue jeans helped the two blend with the maze of grays, blacks, and shadows along the edge of the